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Cheers!: Married to Mossy Gabby

Colleague Kait recently introduced me to this beer during a staff outing. A small group of us went to a local joint (local to me, anyway): Mojo Rosa’s in beautiful downtown Egg Harbor. It’s two blocks from my place.

Kait took us there for a beer on tap called Mossy Gabby. Or that’s what I heard all night. Only later did I learn that this amazing beer is called Más Agave – or More Agave. It’s made by Founders Brewing Co. of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

During that first encounter – still not knowing the real name of this beverage before me in a snifter – I had no idea what I was drinking, but I was charmed by the very first sip. By the second sip, I was deeply in love, almost ready to forget that it was named Mossy Gabby and also that I had vowed not to marry a fourth time. By the third sip, yes, I was ready to marry this beer and remain faithful for the rest of my miserable life.

I was getting so many delicious, harmonious flavors from this snifter of Mossy Gabby. It tasted like the nectar of the gods.

Only later did I learn what the mad scientists at Founders were attempting to do with this beer: They were trying to create a beer margarita.

They wisely chose gose as the style – a salty, German, sour wheat beer. In the case of Más Agave, it is an imperial lime gose. Add some agave to that, age it in tequila barrels, and you have all the elements of a heavenly margarita, with the delicious twist that it is a beer.

And it is a brawny, 10 percent beer, which is funny when you know that I told two craft-beer-loving colleagues who were not at that gathering about Más Agave, and they each said independently, “Is it light?”

It is not light, nor is it heavy. In fact, it seems to be practically perfect in every way.

Kait mentioned that she had also tried the bottled version of Más Agave, and although it’s still a great beer, the draft version had more harmonious character. 

I picked up a four-pack to test her premise, and once again, I found her beer judgment to be sound. The lime gose-iness of the beer stands out more in the bottle, making it more of a Menos Agave than a Más Agave.

But still delicious. The best surprise came with the very last sip from the snifter I had poured the bottled beer into – salt! It was amazing to get that little salty bite at the end. 

This is a high-stepping wild pony of a beer, or as Founders says on its website, “Consider it a party in a bottle.”